I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought, Edward wouldn’t like it and then I realised how stupid that was. Edward probably would have liked it. He’d have come home and told me what had happened and we’d have laughed about it together. But of course nothing was going to happen here and the train drew into Green Park station, people started to push to get out and it was my station anyway. I gave my ‘friend’ a smile and he patted my cock before we parted forever.
I emerged into the sunlight. On the other side of the railings the grass looked green and lush. Parks are the lungs of London and this one was at the moment anyway overcoming the petrol and diesel fumes from the street. It was almost like being in the country. Some pigeons strutted on the grass and a blackbird sang in the branches of a tree. I suddenly felt the urge to walk in but of course I didn’t.
My boss said, “Glad to see you’re getting on top of the work, Mark. I’m looking for someone to visit our Dover branch next month just to check on things. If you feel up to it, perhaps you’d like to go.”
I made enthusiastic noises feeling that I’d been letting him down over the past months and that anyway Dover, not a very exciting town but at least by the sea, would be a change, and perhaps a welcome one. I did quite a bit of work that day.
That night true to my promise, I took Teddy to the bedroom and sat him at the foot of the bed. I’d told him about the guy on the train and also about Dover and, it seemed to me, he’d looked approving. I slept beautifully.
Saturday evening I went round to Ross’s flat. His sister was an almost exact replica of him, slim with dark, short hair and deep blue eyes. Only his slightly squarer jaw line and, obviously the masculine shape of his body made the difference. “Polly and I are twins,” said Ross. I hadn’t known anything about Ross’s family, our conversation over the years I’d known him had usually been concerned with his conquests, of which there were legion, and snippets of gossip and information, of which there were even more.
Another surprise was his sister’s ‘friend’. Although Ross hadn’t specified the gender I’d assumed that the friend was a she. In fact it was a ‘him’ and the most beautiful ‘him’ I’d seen for many a long day. He was a slim young man with glossy black hair, the sort that looks good even when you’ve just got out of bed in the morning after an athletic night’s uninhibited sex. Even across the room I could see that his eyes were blue-grey, those sort of very light, come-to-bed eyes which I find very attractive. And he was gay. That was made clear right from the start when Ross introduced us and he came straight across and kissed me – on the cheeks certainly but it was more than a casual continental ‘muah’ kind of kiss. It wasn’t a come-on. just a generous greeting from one gay guy to another.
His name was Leander. And the three syllables tripped off the tongue, contrasting strangely with my monosyllabic, Mark.
After providing us with generous drinks, Ross and Polly, brother and sister, disappeared into the kitchen to prepare the food leaving Leander and me alone. It was an obvious move and I felt slightly embarrassed but he was a pleasant guy – as well as being ravishingly good looking – so that we soon found ourselves chatting companionably together as if we’d been friends for years. He told me about his job – he actually worked for the Forestry Commission and knew a fascinating amount about our native trees and the animals and plants that grew amongst them. We talked about Polly and Ross – I wondered whether looking after trees was a sufficiently ‘butch’ occupation for Ross to be interested in, but didn’t quite dare ask that. Leander and Polly though had known each other since school days and had remained friends ever since – platonic, he mentioned casually so I didn’t need to ask. The only thing we didn’t mention was Edward and I suspected that Leander and Polly had been well-briefed about that by Ross before my arrival.
We talked of our interests, his were vaguely outdoor – he skiied every Easter in the Austrian Tyrol, mine more bookish, books and films and we occasionally coincided when he and I both admitted to liking American musicals.
The return of Polly and Ross bearing viands and more alcoholic beverages after what seemed a very short time interrupted our conversation and I caught Ross raising Leander a quizzical eyebrow to be answered by an ambiguous smile. No doubt they’d be ‘tete-a-tete’ing after I left.
But whether it was a plan to get me back into the romance arena or not, I enjoyed myself immensely. We had planned to go to a film but, by the time we’d finished the meal which took a long while because it was accompanied by the most salacious anecdotes of Ross’s adventures which were if not sometimes a bit chilling – he took enormous risks – usually wildly funny, it was much too late.
“I must go home,” I said when I realised it was well after midnight. “I haven’t been out this late for months.” It wasn’t mentioned that I hadn’t actually been out at all for months.
“We must do this again,” said Ross.
“And next time make the film,” said Polly.
“We must indeed,” said Leander.
I kissed them all good-bye when the minicab arrived to take me home, this time though Leander aimed for my lips.
Half-asleep I told Teddy about the evening. It was obviously my imagination but I thought he looked disgruntled when I had come into the bedroom alone. Though I’d been sleeping well for the past nights, I woke up suddenly. My radio alarm showed it was 3.23. Sleepily I reached out to the other side of the bed feeling for a warm body. “Edward,” I said but the face I conjured up wasn’t blond, the hair was lustrous black and the eyes, pale blue.
I was horrified that I could have been sexually aroused by a stranger on a train, that someone I had met only the evening before could have supplanted the love of my life in my mind’s eye.
Was I losing my memories of Edward? Obviously not because I could remember the things we had done together, the big things like the holiday we spent in Florence and the small things like staying in in the evening, me reading while he watched the TV.
The shape of Teddy at the bottom of the bed was silhouetted against the window lit by the street lamps from outside. “I won’t see Ross again,” I promised to the bear, though when I said ‘Ross’ I think I meant ‘Leander’.
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep but almost immediately I dropped off. I dreamed of the time Edward and I had gone to Epping Forest, that patch of woodland just outside London. It had been a beautiful day. We had wandered along the paths through the trees and eventually struck off into a thicker patch. There amongst the oaks and ash and beeches, far away from everyone else, we had made love on a grassy bank sprinkled with white wood anemones. This time though something was wrong. I reached out for Edward, wanting to hold him close but he held up his hands. “No,” he said. “No!”
The rejection made me feel almost sick, something rose in my throat and I was choking. I awoke threshing around. Like the previous time, Teddy was lying across my face. There was no pressure but as I pushed him away, I couldn’t understand how he’d got from the bottom of the bed to the top. Perhaps I’d kicked out in my dream and moved him – but a distance of five feet? And towards me? Impossible, – yet how else could it have happened?